Within the weeks main as much as the election, Mr. Díaz defended himself in opposition to liberal assaults, arguing that his spiritual orientation
Within the weeks main as much as the election, Mr. Díaz defended himself in opposition to liberal assaults, arguing that his spiritual orientation didn’t imply that he hated homosexual folks and ladies, as he instructed The New York Submit, and that his observe document was identified to his neighborhood. “When the Bronx was burning, I used to be right here rebuilding the borough,’’ he stated in the identical interview. “Have a look at the Bronx now.’’
However the Bronx now was exactly the issue. The borough has borne a number of the biggest burdens of the pandemic — the case price within the district is roughly 4 instances greater than it’s in Greenwich Village and SoHo, for instance. The general public-health scenario was deeply troubling earlier than the coronavirus arrived. The Bronx has a excessive incidence of maternal mortality and the best childhood bronchial asthma price within the nation.
Not like the neighboring 14th Congressional District, which Ms. Ocasio-Cortez represents and encompasses components of northern Queens, the 15th lacks a sufficiently massive gentrifying class to have clearly swayed outcomes a technique or one other. Actually, April polling performed by Bronx United, a bunch that organized to defeat Mr. Díaz, indicated that Mr. Torres and Mr. Blake, regardless of their ages, weren’t particularly beloved by younger voters. Andrew M. Cuomo, Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Nancy Pelosi all had greater favorability rankings within the district than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.
The identical spring polling knowledge revealed that though the district was certainly not a hotbed of millennial democratic socialism, voters have been extra liberally inclined than typical knowledge recommended. It turned out that roughly two thirds of voters surveyed believed that homosexuality must be accepted and that abortion must be authorized most often. The extra that voters realized about Mr. Díaz’s regressive social attitudes, Dan Level of Bronx United defined, “the sooner they moved away from him.”
When confronted with the selection between inserting a vote within the identify of cultural ideology and one within the identify of survival, older voters, struck profoundly by the pandemic, appeared to decide on the latter. In 2016, Donald J. Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Florida, amongst voters 65 and older by 17 factors. Greater than half of Cuban voters within the state, who skew socially conservative, additionally voted for Trump. However the virus is ravaging Florida; as of the tip of Might, 83 p.c of Covid deaths have been folks over 65. Priorities would possibly simply rearrange themselves.